


Shockwave, making waves

by tragakes (lejf)



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: /Size difference, Blurr/Shockwave is the secondary pairing that unfortunately don't get any R-rated screentime, Bottom Megatron, Heroic Megatron (?), Identity Porn, M/M, Megatron's magical ability to tuck mass away into nowhere, Size Kink, dub-con ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 07:02:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14303388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/tragakes
Summary: Megatron disguised himself as an Autobot and walked in their midst.





	Shockwave, making waves

**Author's Note:**

> Not really much verse continuity. All the necessary exposition should be given in the story
> 
> To be honest, I was just trying create a pwp premise for a smaller Megatron on Optimus’ spike, but it turned into this instead     
> \- ㅅ -

“We’ve lost,” Megatron said, a strange calm settling over him. His loyal Deception and spy stared back from the monitor, completely still, the lack of cues the most open he’d ever been.

“There was no need to inform me of this. I know. I _have_ known,” Shockwave said, with careful control that belied what Megatron knew was a tipping point. Longarm Prime’s office was visible behind him, Shockwave’s real form out of place and dark and charcoal against the passivity of his surroundings, one of his claws twitching to catch the light.

On Megatron’s side, the Autobots were bombing and comms from Starscream piled up on his HUD, demanding if he had died yet. 

His Decepticons, starving, exhausted, had already been evacuated from the underground headquarters, but still their lives had not been prolonged for long. The Autobots had forged alliances around the galaxy. Autobots and their allies would flush out the remainder of his Decepticons in time, not that Megatron would be around to see it. He was the only one left to destroy their base of operations on the run-down planet and any evidence of their trail, regardless of his own survival rate — a decoy too tantalising for Autobots to resist.

They had been losing for years and years. Energon was long depleted. Barely a few hundred Decepticons were left and their numbers were declining still. Megatron had discreetly opened the channel for surrender not once, but twice, and both times found himself rebuffed by snideness from the Council. 

“I’m permitting you freedom. Your loyalty is second to none, Shockwave, therefore I am _personally_ ordering you to live, after my death, regardless of what you believe you may be able to do for the remainder of us.” There was a certain guilt attached to his words because Shockwave had never been allowed to come home, rag-tag home as their base was. He had been forced to spend his years constrained and disguised. “Live. The Decepticon cause is no more. Live with that Autobot you–“

“No,” Shockwave said, just as a tremor rocked through the room and Megatron nearly stumbled at the console. The Autobots had entered the Decepticon base.

At the same moment the window burst open on Shockwave’s end and the blue Autobot in question crashed into the room, babbling, “Longarm sir you told me that you needed to see me urgently as a life or death situation– sir-?! You are certainly not Longarm Prime and in fact if I could say so myself I would say that you were a–“

Shockwave didn’t turn around. “No,” he repeated, to Megatron. “Our cause is never lost.” A high whine filled the call as his hyper flux cannon charged up. Megatron had never seen it nor never heard of it fired, and realised immediately why as it roared to life. Shockwave’s eye grew brighter and brighter, the strain on his core systems immense. The air around him visibly distorted from the heat and his frame began to distend. It looked like his spark was glowing in his chest, bright enough to be leaking through the many layers of his plate armour and electrifying them.

The Autobot’s babble was running like a broken radio’s text; Shockwave took an immense stride and gathered the bot in his other arm just as the cannon’s heat shield came up, Blurr yelling as the cannon’s core spun faster and faster. Shockwave’s body was burning, enough that he dropped Blurr to avoid searing him, while objects in the room were flung around by the growing storm and slammed against the shield. The opposite wall of the building came down and was picked up in the maelstrom though Shockwave stood steadfast against it all, unmoving even when Blurr threw himself at the cannon and tried to shove it out of the way, only to cry out as it shocked him. 

The data pad Megatron was watching from was shaking violently even inside the shield. Shockwave had once said that there was a shield that formed with his cannon, but that it was for preventing enemy fire, not from the cannon blast itself— and Megatron realised why: Because there was no possibility of bracing against the shot that Shockwave was charging. It drew from the cosmos themselves, from stars that had been burning since the dawn of life, from blackholes that entire solar systems and clusters and _galaxies_ were drawn into— it drew from the beginning and blistering end of space-time.

Aimed out into the heart of the Autobot city, Shockwave channeled this power— and it was said that Primus was the god of light, and Megatron could believe that this was Primus now, the ghost of him standing behind Shockwave’s frame, so enormous that Shockwave’s body was crumpling under the torrent of energy, a single spark as a conduit to monsters and gods, a set of tiny lens that converged a whole universe of light to a single point, blazing and burning and shining—

The call dropped before Megatron even heard the blast.

The room around him was very quiet although Starscream was still trying to reach him and Autobots were rampaging through the Decepticon base. A laser cutter was at the door. Megatron turned around, very calmly. The base-wide explosive was armed. Something cold came over him. As soon as the door fell and the Autobot stepped inside, Megatron seized him by the head and ripped it off even while the laser cutter imbedded itself into his side. Gunfire came through the doorway and he charged through even as his arrays screamed in pain. He tore them apart, and when he saw that the hallway was filled with more, he pointed his own cannon into their fear-filled optics and fired. 

Then he was limping through his once-headquarters down heat-seared hallways. There was no alarm, no announcement of time left on the explosives, but he had it counting in his HUD. He crumpled Autobots that stepped into his path. Un-mapped corridors and pipelines that were claustrophobic and dirty and echoing with many pedes led him to the surface. A few Autobot ships stood empty but one was still in the sky, providing cover, and it immediately turned its weapons on him, and he spent the last of his energon on one more shot that sheared the ship open. He’d just wrenched open one of the doors to the un-manned ships and was frantically attempting to get it off the ground when he received a comm from Lugnut and wondered for a mad second why _Lugnut_ was contacting him. Then realised why the Autobots hadn’t come flooding out after him yet.

The idiot had _stayed_. To help his great leader, Megatron. 

The base was going to erupt in less than five kills. Megatron had been planning to die in this stand either way, because the explosives had been locked only to respond to him, and he’d needed to save the last of his people. But blasted _Lugnut_. Megatron had vowed that he would protect the last of his—

When he opened the comm, it was a death report, automatically generated upon termination of a bot. He was slamming on the thrusters before he knew it, and hadn’t even hit the atmosphere when the last home of Decepticons erupted beneath him, the ground cracking open, flames bursting out from its core, Autobot bodies as black charred things that were tossed up in the pillars of fire. The ship lurched and he was thrown out of the seat, slamming his helm against the wall, and among all wounds and energon that was splashed across his frame, enemies’ and his alike, that was the final break. He offlined. 

He came to the darkness of a cockpit, staggering to his pedes, nearly slipping in a pool of his own energon.His chronometer, although in complete disarray, told him it’d only been a few kliks, and all the HUD warning and alarms he’d previously shoved down were flashing in full glaring intensity. He shuffled his way down the ship’s main deck to see a body lying there and nearly stopped in surprise when he processed that he hadn’t been the only one knocked out when the ship tumbled. 

His kneel was more of a collapse, and his claws peeled open the front plate of the Autobot, who woke, and opened his mouth to scream. Megatron’s audio receptors weren’t even functional to hear it. He pulled a main energon line out from a tank and closed his jaws around it, sickly sweet energon jolting his systems. The Autobot had frozen in terror beneath him at the cannibalism. Megatron filled himself up — to 25% — and then tried to plug the tubing back when he heard a more important sound.

As energon-starved and weak and injured as Megatron was, he picked the Autobot up, hauling it to the cockpit. It was starting to whimper. He stopped when he reached the front of the ship, because he _thought_ he’d heard a transmission coming through as soon as his audio receptors had started working again, and there was. Optimus Prime himself, solemnly speaking. 

“— _a terrible event has occurred. We mourn the lives of hundreds— no, thousands and hundreds of thousands of Autobots that were offlined—_ ”

The Autobot he had captured let out a cry at that, twisting, fluids beginning to leak from its optics. Megatron did not take his eyes off the transmission. His grip tightened.

“— _the perpetrator has been captured. One of Megatron’s most formidable fighters, Shockwave._ ” Optimus paused at that, though the quality was too low to make out his expression. Inside, Megatron’s processors were spinning. Shockwave was still alive. Shockwave had given a final cry to his cause even when Megatron had ordered him to let go.

Megatron was on an Autobot ship, and his Decepticons had long scattered to the far reaches of space. 

This time he could see Optimus’ face clearly, twisted in anguish. “ _What remains of the council demands that he is publicly executed in ten cycles’ time._ ” Megatron stared down at the Autobot struggling in his servos, at his shining Autobot badge. “ _I do not know how many of you out there would sympathise with me, but I know that many of you hold honour for the role I have played in the war, and with this in mind, I would like to… apologise. Shockwave has been in our midst, and among all Autobots, where I should have been the bastion, I failed to recognise this, and, in turn, failed you, Autobots. I failed our—_ ”

Megatron pushed the Autobot down. He peeled off the badge first with his deadly claws, and its owner began to weep. He looked back up. The bot was shaking, the news racking its body with shivers, its own life on a precarious edge. Almost gently, Megatron closed his enormous claws around its helm and crushed its processor. From its chest that was still open, he took its energon line once more. 

Optic colours depended on the chemical spectrum that was afforded to them and that often came from their energon sources. His optics, dim as they were from being fuel-deficient for the last few years, found the switch to blue exceedingly simple. The Autobot’s body was still as Megatron drained him. Dead. Lugnut. Autobots. So many dead.

:Starscream,: he finally replied to his SIC, who immediately barraged him with more messages. He read them, but dismissed them. :Before you left, you asked if I would rather be dead or alive.:

:And you picked dead — but you’re still here, aren’t you, you fragging liar! How in the Pits did you get out? Are we supposed to be expecting you?:

:No,: Megatron said. :I think I will go to die, after all. Someone has shown me that our cause has not fallen yet.:

He stood, still holding the energon line, re-routing the ship for Cybertron. 

*

When they entered Cybertronian airspace, five cycles had passed. Megatron had haphazardly painted himself with spare tins he’d found in the Autobots’ living spaces, imbedded the Autobot badge, and had folded most of his mass away into transformation sub-space, though most of his injuries remained. 

He didn’t realise he’d reached the planet immediately— the familiar faded visage of Cybertron, magnificent and gleaming under the light of their sun, was lost where a gaping hole had been blasted into the side of it and carved out the planet. Debris was dangling out in space, bumping the hull, bodies and parts of buildings and parts of what had been land, remaining struts jutting out of the planet obscenely. 

The docking stations that he were familiar with were gone. Comm chatter was filled with static and refugees and the homeless searching for bots they knew, and no one comm’ed him as he began his descent into Cybertron, Iacon. The atmosphere was thicker than before, the cloud layer stifled with dust, and when he emerged from it, the full scale of Shockwave’s destruction became clear. Through the golden city — the city and planet that had been so ready to celebrate its victory over the Decepticons — there was a streak of utter darkness hundreds of miles wide that had plowed out the earth, so deep that the light could not illuminate the bottom, and it stretched further through Iacon, Kalis, Torus, Uraya, and more cities still, perhaps even Tarn. Megatron could not distinguish them in their rubble. The great towers of Iacon he remembered were no more. The remaining buildings looked shocking small in comparison to the pit that had clawed the planet in half. In the centre of the fissure, on the horizon, blotting out the sun, lay impending destruction like a great swirling eye in the form of a black hole. 

It would take less than a vorn for the whole of Cybertron to be engulfed, pulled in by the gradually growing event horizon. While black holes could radiate out into nothing, the planet was too close. It would feed its own destruction.

Flying over the carnage, near the edge of the blast, Megatron felt dwarfed. Enormous towers had sunken and crumbled into the emptiness below, and more still were falling on the unstable ground. He saw them fall before he even heard the sound of foundations cracking and tumbling, insignificant in the abyss. 

It was no wonder that Shockwave had never fired the cannon. Its destruction was too wanton — a destruction that grew. Cybertron would never be theirs’, because Cybertron would cease to exist in not long. 

His ship powered on, through air-space, and he steered it to land on the flat rooftop of some building that had its far wall carved off. He deduced it to be stable, but also a guarantee that he wouldn’t immediately be demanded for identity. Visibility fell as he descended, another dust layer setting in, the canyon of destruction yawning wider and wider as buildings approached recognisable sizes. As he touched down and stepped out on numb pedes, he was buffeted by wind. The concrete floor of the building beneath him was cool and unforgiving, and in his Autobot disguise it was larger than he had expected. He looked back, at the part of the building that had been shorn off, past its edge, and saw— nothing. A great gaping jaw of nothing. He could not see the other end of the trench the pit had opened up, only dust, and he fought the irrational urge to step to the ledge to look down. Instead, he took a flight of stairs in the corner of the building and committed every turn and twist to memory. If he wanted to escape the planet quickly, with Shockwave in tow, it would be necessary to return. 

He was leaking energon behind him, he realised, at some point, and plugged the spilling line with a stone. Then he cursed himself for taking so long to realise. His processors were still more scrambled than he thought, and he turned them towards his surroundings, to the rock-strewn, dust-laden building in which he descended.

All the windows had been blown out. Furniture was piled in corners, and now that he looked closely, paint was melting off the walls. Soot and dirt layered everything. They must’ve been stirred up in the blast, or the aftermath, where wind currents were strong near the trench. 

On the fourth floor, he found a pile of scrap that could’ve been either a melted bot or a computer. Glass surrounded it, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection, energon-splattered and still mostly grey. He looked like a mech that had been smashed through a compactor and unfolded with a hammer, the rough-job paint smeared as though someone had scraped it off him to reveal his base steel. His face, too, he had been altered just enough to be unrecognisable.

If questioned, he would simply call himself ‘Mega’ — if the bots had an Ultra, why not a Mega? Preferably he could cite himself as being in a coma for the last few vorns and so could scope out the landscape from there. His home had been destroyed, he had no connections, no source of energon… it was an acceptable enough cover, and close enough to the truth that he could follow it convincingly. 

He stepped out onto the streets, lost and wandering, though they didn’t resemble streets much anymore even though they hadn’t been in the direct line of the blast — otherwise they would’ve been erased entirely, as the city had. Rubble made them uneven, metal struts and concrete slabs piled everywhere from holes in buildings that were collapsing. There was a bitter poetic justice to it, knowing that Autobots — and Megatron himself — were the ones that had pushed Shockwave into this destruction. It had been an act of defiance, a flag flying against the wind, a sign that Decepticons would not stand to die in such a weak, humiliated way.

Destruction was a familiar sight. Megatron could feel the ghost of past battlefields surrounding him as he stood in the centre of the street. He could hear the phantom cry of bots that were scrambled by the shockwave from the blast, he could feel the imprint of the searing heat, he could hear the wailing alarm that would’ve sounded across the city. He could taste the horror once the Autobots that survived crawled out of the wreckage to see that their cities were simply— gone. Obliterated like they’d never even existed, and fanned by miles of destruction where the shockwave had downed buildings and blown out circuits.

“Hey, hey!” 

A group of bots were approaching from the other side of the street through the dust that had kicked up, waving. Megatron looked around and saw no other bots to confirm that they were waving at him. 

“Hey, are you alright?” the bot at the front asked. They were a search and rescue team, Megatron realised. They were of assorted sizes so that they could manoeuvre the rubble better, and he recognised one as able to transform into a crane. The bots were much larger than he was accustomed to, in his small and unassuming autobot form, though they were dented and scratched and dirty from where they must’ve been searching all team. 

“He seems a bit shell-shocked.”

“I’m fine,” Megatron said, finally diverting enough power to his vocaliser.

“Are you sure?” one asked, gesturing at the energon splattered across him and his multiple structural injuries, including his minor energon line that was jutting out from where the laser cutter had shorn him open and he’d plugged with a rock that was still feebly splurging.

“Oh,” Megatron said, playing his part.

“Here, here, one of us will take you back, okay?”

He nodded mutely, and the bot led him further down the streets, watching him in concern, stones crunching under their pedes. “Where are you taking me?” Megatron asked.

“We have a lot of emergency camps around the planet, but we’re quite close to one of the central camps because Iacon got hit hard. We’ve cleared away only a fraction of the rubble, but it’s enough that I can drive once we get closer.”

“I understand.”

“It’s an absolute mess,” the bot said mournfully. “But I have full faith in Optimus Prime that we can rebuild.”

At first he wanted to laugh. Were they _looking_ at the same planet? This wasn’t just one small suburb, razed, and that would’ve already taken deca-cycles to clean up. This was half the planet — a planet that wouldn’t even exist for much longer.

Then it struck Megatron that maybe the general populace didn’t _know_ that there was a black hole in the heart of the explosion, and that they didn’t know how far the destruction reached. He recalled how he hadn’t been able to see the other side of the crater — and maybe that was it. From the ground, they couldn’t see it. Optimus Prime must’ve known, though. Those in power must’ve known. The Autobots would fall into full disarray when they realised that their planet was doomed.“I thought the council was in power.” 

“Ha, they don’t even help us. It’s Optimus who does. Did you see his speech after the blast? He’s our real hero.”

“I didn’t see it. I was still trapped at that time.”

The bot gave him a look of such sympathy that Megatron averted his optics. “He took the blame all on himself and promised to rebuild. It was so inspiring.”

_Oh, Optimus, you liar!_

“Anyway,” the bot said, “the road here is clear enough. I’ll transform and you can ride, okay?”

“Yes,” Megatron said, as the bot folded forwards and snapped into a generic racer. A door swung open and Megatron ducked inside, perched on the edge of a seat uneasily as the engines kicked to life and they tore down the clearer highway. 

The ride was mostly quiet, the bot presumably still receiving comms from the rest of his rescue team as well as focusing on the road where occasionally rubble still blocked their path. Megatron simply looked out at the carcasses of buildings. Out in the dusty horizon he could not see any more skyscrapers that heralded the golden ages of Cybertron. It seemed like all the taller structures had fallen, and with it, the planet’s legacy.

They passed over a bridge at one point, a hastily made temporary one, underneath which churned water and solvent from burst pipes. Buzz flies were standing on its banks, drinking. It was filthy and unstoppable, and as they drove further, he realised that many lower places would’ve been flooded. The slums of the cities would’ve been completely swept away if they hadn’t been vaporised entirely.

“We’re coming onto camp in ten kliks,” the bot told him. Megatron glanced forward as they tore down a dirt path and buildings came into view. It was a tiny nameless settlement, buildings not even two floors high, erected newly because their windows were still intact. Even here, the metal covering of Cybertronian had been stripped away by the blast and in many places stone and earth showed through. It was what caused the dust.

Bots milled around the settlement, and Megatron thanked his transporter as they stopped. He received a, “No problem!” in reply, and, “just ask around where the med bay is first, and Ratchet should patch you up and tell you where to go next.”

So the medic was still alive. Megatron wished the bot good luck, and then he was left in the dust cloud in the wake of its departure. The settlement awaited him, and surreal were the buildings that likely wouldn’t even comfortably house him if he was in his true Decepticon form. Surreal, too, was walking down its paths with Autobots scurrying around him but barely sparing him a second glance. Those that did look twice were simply filled with sympathy at his state, and a few stopped him to tell him where the medical ward was. 

He had been advised to follow those directions to the med ward, but he found himself distasteful of the idea of talking to any more Autobots, let alone allowing a medic into his internals. Instead, he wandered, and at one point saw the Autobot, _Blurr_ , and would’ve tried to speak to him if he weren’t already engaged in deep conversation with another bot. Had he chosen to condemn Shockwave after all? Megatron found himself uncertain of what he would’ve approved of. He didn’t expect Blurr to free Shockwave, but perhaps they’d already spoken. Blurr looked very haggard. It was impossible to tell.

Megatron let him be in lieu of further exploration. The buildings opened up into a square, where tables were set out for bots to consume energon rations. Most bots he saw were dirty and tired, but filled with a fierce sort of determination and will to keep moving. It did not remind him of his own Decepticons in their last days. His Decepticons had faced a much slower, agonising, death, where hope did not exist. These bots were still alive and kicking. For a moment his processor churned with old pain, but then he saw—

In the centre of the square stood Optimus Prime.

Megatron’s pedes locked instantly and suddenly all his HUD operators went wild, flashing alarms at him. Of course Optimus would’ve been here. This was the camp that most Iacon — the capital — survivors were funnelled to. Moreover, he’d seen _Blurr_ already, who he knew to be part of Optimus’ crew. Of course he would’ve been here. 

Optimus Prime was either a very large danger or reward. He would know where Shockwave was. He would have access to Shockwave. Maybe Blurr, too, at that, depending on which Autobots still lived. He had been sub-consciously counting them as he walked, and realised that there were about one hundred Autobots here, at most. While bots in the cities of the other side of the planet would’ve lived, undeniably most major Autobots had been killed, meaning Blurr could’ve been promoted in ranking, and would be much easier for Megatron to manipulate to rescue Shockwave. 

But Optimus Prime was moving towards him, and much, much larger than Megatron was accustomed to. He realised now why regular Autobots lauded him. Megatron’s helm did not even reach Optimus’ shoulders, only half-way up his torso, and under the sunlight, even with dirt streaked across his frame, he was a formidable sight. “Are you alright?” Optimus was asking, and Megatron didn’t recognise, didn’t _believe_ that Optimus was talking to him until the bigger bot had stopped in front of him, crouching until he was at a lower height.

Megatron felt slightly demeaned. “You’re injured,” Optimus said, placatingly. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before, so you might not know your way around. I can take you to the medbay.” He reached out a servo that Megatron, instinctively, flinched away from. Optimus’ optics shuttered in surprise. 

Megatron mustered all of his minimal subterfuge — and perhaps he should’ve sent some other Decepticon here to rescue Shockwave instead, but time had been too limited for that — to stare furiously at the earth and let out a, “I apologise,” in the most chastised way he could muster. He just had to imagine he was Starscream.

Something dark passed through Optimus’ expression. “No, don’t apologise. You don’t need to apologise.”

His tanks nearly _roiled_ with the gentleness that Optimus was treating him with. It was— wrong. It was so incomprehensible that he was talking to his greatest enemy like this. How had Shockwave managed?

“I would not want to go to a medic,” Megatron explained instead, tasting the words like they were foreign. Optimus nodded in sympathy immediately, and that confirmed his suspicion that Optimus thought he had been _abused_ , for Pit’s sake, though in ways it would serve as an even better cover story than being in a coma. He could pretend that he had been kept like some sort of show-pet for a sadistic mech and it would explain his ignorance of outside affairs as well as reluctance towards bots. “I do not trust them.”

“Do you trust me?”

Megatron stared at him, cocking his head slightly. “You are the hero of all Autobots.” 

“Then will you allow me to treat you?” His face was completely open, completely guileless. He had extended a servo to Megatron once more. Megatron placed his servo into it — unfamiliar given his usual claws — and found himself gently tugged forwards. Another servo curled around his waist and he found himself lifted up into the Autobot Prime’s arms. He found himself speechless at the act, even when Optimus looked down to confirm that he was alright with the touch. He’d never been lifted up in his life — aside from in his hand-gun alt-form, though that was far different —, much less in the arms of his enemy, so close to his spark chamber. He could transform his claws back right then and pierce the Matrix itself. The thought was tempting, though he would have to guarantee Shockwave’s safety first. Then, if possible, he would execute the stupid, trusting, Prime. 

Bots stopped Optimus as they made their way through the settlement. They spoke to him of energon levels, the structural integrity of the most newly erected buildings, of scouting parties’ lack of successes in finding more mechs, and so forth. Most of them, Optimus asked Megatron to hold the datapads for because he had his arms full. “Why are you using datapads rather than communication lines?” Megatron asked, after he’d taken the fifth one. He glanced at it briefly. It was a proposal for opening a farm for avianoids and other energon sources.

“The communication lines aren’t working reliably anymore. The mass of the planet has changed so drastically that satellites were lost out of orbit,” Optimus said. Megatron turned the datapads over in his servos. Data could no longer be easily communicated. The great archives must’ve been lost in the blast, as well. His alias would not be discovered because there would be no database to reference his false designation from.

Megatron wanted to question him on the futility of rebuilding, but it didn’t fit his alias. His alias was taciturn, almost meek, and undoubtedly he’d end up critical, trying to stab holes into Autobot positivity. 

Instead, he leant his head against Optimus’ shoulder and rested his servos across the pile of datapads in his lap. The electricity of Optimus’ circuitry thrummed beneath his helm, the evidence of his life. The foolish Autobot could almost be endearing with the way he clutched Megatron so protectively and kept glancing down at Megatron’s still-leaking energon line. He seemed disbelieving that Megatron could’ve ignored it, but Megatron’s pain tolerance was magnitudes higher than any Autobot’s. Most Decepticons’ were, after what they had endured in the past few vorns. 

It was testimony to the personality of the Prime that Autobots that stopped to speak to him did not even ask about Megatron in his arms. Perhaps it was a common enough occurrence: their Prime, the saviour, tending to the wounded. Megatron had always known Optimus to be the type to take suffering into his own servos, after all, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to even _him_. But it was. 

Megatron remembered, briefly, on a planet that had been scorched by warfare, having to dig through a sea of bodies and energon for one weakly flickering electromagnetic signal, and though he had denied it later, his processor had been flooded with panic as he pushed aside frame after frame and saw only the empty optics of his warriors. Beneath it all was Starscream, cowardly Starscream, who had always lied and snivelled to live, through all his static, begging for Megatron to kill him as he was lifted out from the corpses. Because every other member of his trine was dead. Because they had failed their final desperate assault. Because the Decepticons had lost. Megatron had not answered him, and carried his second in command out from that war zone himself, in his energon-splattered arms. 

But this was different.

Megatron was still alive, Starscream was still alive, and this time he would take Shockwave away from under the claws of death. He’d never been self-sacrificing like Prime, and he’d previously never put the lives of his warriors above his own, but it had ceased to be about his life in the moment Shockwave had powered up his cannon. He had seen.

_Their lives_ were all that remained of his cause. If they died, _then_ , truly, Decepticons would have lost. In the turns of the galaxies they would fade, oil stains in the archives of the Autobots, menaces that had fought for nothing. It was all that he could strive for now: to keep his Decepticons alive. It was an awful mockery of his cause, the one of glorious shining towers under a corruption-free Senate, but he would stand by it.

“Wait here,” Optimus said. They had arrived outside a small solemn building, a rickety chair outside that Optimus settled him down in. He disappeared into a pin-locked door. Megatron swept his optics up, once, looking up at the sky, and then ordered one of his optic-lids to shift up by mere nano-metres so that he was not only looking out through the front of his optics, but also the bottom, and could discreetly video Optimus punching in the pin. 

When Optimus returned Megatron was still looking up, and was instead thinking about the seekers under his rule. They would be happy to be able to fly under even a dirtied Cybertronian sky like this, though the only one left was Starscream. Thundercracker had died near the start of the battle and had driven the remaining two into a frenzy. Skywarp had warped too often, pushed himself beyond his limits, until energon oozed out of every seam in his frame, out his optics, out his mouth, and he collapsed into a twitching heap. 

“I’m going to replace this, alright?” Optimus said, voice slicing through the haze. Megatron was jerked back into reality as jarringly as a hook would’ve pulled him.

“Yes,” Megatron answered. As the rock was removed out there was a fresh surge, but Optimus had a medical-grade standard energon line cap that he inserted immediately, applying gentle pressure. It was no issue to Megatron that the line wasn’t transferring energon to any systems anymore — he’d already increased the flow rate along other lines to compensate.

Optimus had other patches that he was taking out of a small kit to attend to Megatron’s body where the frame tear was particularly severe. “I can do this myself,” Megatron offered, after feeling uncomfortable at the sight of Optimus kneeling by his legs. “I’m sure you have more important matters to tend to.”

At that, Optimus settled back, optics unreadable. He nodded. Then remained where he was, after taking the datapads from Megatron. He stayed at Megatron’s pedes to pore over them, while Megatron patched himself up on his own, envious of the high-grade medical supplies the Autobots had to offer. As he wrapped his wounds in rough patches and makeshift repairs, though, he couldn’t help glancing down at Optimus occasionally. He hadn’t seen Optimus on the battlefields for a very long time — though Optimus had been the one heralded among Autobots as their vanquisher, and, as Megatron understood it, a major strategist in the war. 

“I want to know,” he said finally, and Optimus’ optics immediately shot up from their forced intensity in reading, “just how far the destruction reaches. I haven’t…”

“Everywhere,” Optimus said. “All major cities levelled. Alpha Trion dead. Ultra Magnus dead. Sentinel Prime dead.”

“Oh,” Megatron said, genuinely surprised as Optimus rampaged on.

“Cybertron has lost enough mass to be thrown from its orbit and lose its moons. Without moons, the Mythric Sea loses its currents and its temperatures will alter so dramatically that all ecolotronic-systems in it will collapse. And that’s without taking into account the climate from the changed course in our space system. Either it’ll get so cold that every living thing starts to freeze, or so hot that our energon starts to boil in our lines. And, moreover, cosmic radiation is coming in at unprecedented levels after Cybertron’s magnetic field has been weakened. If everything else doesn’t offline us first, then that, eventually, will. It isn’t just the buildings, it isn’t just our people… It’s our whole planet destroyed.”

Optimus, Megatron realised, did not even _need_ to know about the black hole. Whether or not he knew, at this point, was inconsequential. He already realised that the planet was doomed. Did the other Autobots? “I thought you were supposed to be the paragon of hope,” Megatron said, a little drily. Optimus deflated.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to—“ he shook his helm. “I’ve had it so bottled up. I shouldn’t have. This must’ve been spark-breaking to hear.”

“No, I don’t feel much loss at the thought of it. Cybertron has never treated me particularly well.”

Optimus looked devastated. 

“And I understand the need to stay quiet about it,” Megatron continued. “You want to rescue as many bots as possible before you evacuate the planet. If it was common knowledge that the planet was well and truly lost, bots would begin leaving on their own. Widespread chaos.”

He worried, for a klik, that he’d been too eloquent, but Optimus was gazing at him with such adoration that it gave him pause. He carefully turned the conversation away. “But how did it happen?”

“… You don’t know?”

“I remained in my— prison after the blast hit. I didn’t realise that my enslaver was even dead. Nor that I could come out.”

It was too easy to play Optimus’ heartstrings. “It was a Decepticon — Shockwave — who fired an internal weapon of mass destruction into our planet.”

“This was planned?” Megatron tried to look concerned at the implication that there might’ve been more Decepticons about. “Was this orchestrated by Decepticons all along?”

“No,” Optimus said. “It— it was an act of desperation.”

“How do you know that?” He instantly regretted asking. It came out too accusing and sharp. 

Optimus didn’t answer, staring blankly down at one of the datapads in his lap. It was the one about avianoid farms — destined to fail because Autobots were not meant to stay on the planet much longer. Quietly, “I’d prefer not to answer that.”

“I apologise,” Megatron replied quickly. “I overstepped.”

“You didn’t. I shouldn’t have said it.” Was he seeing things, or did Optimus seem bitter? He thumbed at the corner of the pad, optics mostly shuttered with his down-turned gaze. “The Decepticons were — and still are — mostly dead. There is no rallied force to organise any strike against us. We directed an assault into their final refuge not too many cycles ago, though it’s impossible to contact them now, but— it doesn’t matter. There is no more war anymore. Just dying. There’s nothing planned.”

Again sensing tumultuous conversation topic, he altered it slightly. “If you were in the same position as Shockwave, would you have done as he did?”

Optimus looked up at him, optics deadly focused. 

“If there were fewer than a hundred Autobots left,” Megatron clarified, “and you had a weapon that could level the home of all Decepticons.”

“No,” Optimus said.

“No?”

“If I stood in a city where thousands of innocent bots lived — no. Those on the battlefield that I meet choose to be there.”

_You idealistic idiot!_ Megatron wanted to shout and shake him by his expansive shoulders. No Decepticon, warrior or not, had been spared by the Autobots. Where they lost on the battlefield, energon rations fell lower and lower — no Decepticon went unaffected. Optimus’ stupid, ‘noble’ decisions only prolonged suffering.

Instead he said, “I see.”

“Would you have?”

“That really depends,” Megatron answered, and couldn’t help his dry tone seeping in again. “Can I inspire anybody? Will my people even know that I’d fired? Am I feeling enough hatred to pull the trigger? I wonder what Shockwave thought in that moment.”

The silence from Optimus was filled with heavy thought, and when he did speak, every word was chosen carefully. “He’s still alive.”

“He’s— Primus.” Megatron dropped his voice to a low, worried, hiss. “He destroyed the planet and he’s still _alive_? He could fire it again. Optimus! He could be anywhere.“ 

“We have him in custody.”

“What custody? Are there even any high level prisons left that can hold a Decepticon like him back?”

“He’s in one of the rooms of my quarters,” Optimus admitted wearily, antennae flicking back at the shock — genuine — radiating from Megatron. There was no little amount of worry, either. But the worry wasn’t just for Optimus. If Shockwave was in Optimus’ quarters and not escaping, that meant he was in a state of absolute disrepair. Destroyed beyond recognition. Megatron relived the scene, the heat he could practically feel blistering through the screen as the cannon charged, the awful twisting of Shockwave’s frame.

“Are you delusional? He’s going to kill you.”

“He isn’t. He’s not in any state to kill anyone.”

Megatron still looked disbelieving, the medi-patches in his servos forgotten at this point, though he knew, with all empirical evidence, that Shockwave was likely on the brink of offline.

“How destroyed have you ever seen a bot? Imagine that, but a hundred times worse. I’m not sure he’ll even live to see his execution in five cycles’ time.” Optimus looked profoundly disturbed at the notion of it — because he must have been expending medical supplies to keep Shockwave online. Autobots would be in uproar if they were denied their public execution, so Optimus was _torturing_ Shockwave by keeping him alive. 

Megatron realised, in an out-of-body experience, that in all his time walking through this Autobot settlement, he hadn’t seen a single other door with a pin-pad like the one Optimus had entered earlier. He’d assumed it was storage at first, but realised suddenly that the roof was too low, too uneconomical to be storage. What else needed great security? What else would Optimus have gone inside to retrieve his personal medical supplies? The building that he was sitting right in front of was the one _where Optimus stayed_ , and was where Shockwave was kept. Shockwave could have been dying on the wall right behind his seat. 

He had the code to the front door. He could attack Optimus right here and break in. But what if he was wrong? What if Shockwave wasn’t in this building? What if there were more locked doors inside? He could physically tear down the building, but there was no hope of escape after that. 

Megatron shuttered his optics. He was even more pressed for time than he thought. Preferably, he would find some way inside before this cycle was over. 

“Optimus Prime,” he said, and even to _him_ the way he said the words was unfamiliar — without their old loathing and distaste, and instead with a hint of amusement and familiarity. “You haven’t even asked for my designation, and yet you bare your spark to me so readily. You share so many of your troubles.”

“I can’t help it. You remind me of someone I once told everything to.” Optimus admitted it with a smile that was only a bit sad. When he looked at Megatron this time, he seemed to have noticed that Megatron had fully bound his wounds. Megatron could already feel his self-repair systems kicking in with revitalised vigour. “Enough of this terrible talk. I’ll take you to get some energon, and then I’ll have to see Ratchet. I promised to discuss something with him.”

It was odd, but really not _that_ odd, that Optimus hadn’t asked for his designation regardless. Optimus wanted to keep imagining that he was someone else. Megatron watched — and he would not say _admired_ — the broad expanses of Optimus’ back as he followed him through the settlement. He remembered shooting it more than once, but from this low vantage, it was almost unfamiliar in the flex and shift of struts and metal parts. 

This could be the last time he saw Optimus, he realised, and with that thought, let himself drink in every sight of his nemesis. The fierce set of his helm, the solid lines of him, the power promised beneath, and even though the metal had seen better days, Optimus held himself with great honour. If Megatron would die to this, he could accept it. Optimus turned slightly, seeing him, and Megatron jerked his gaze away.

They stopped in the square where they had first met, and Optimus punched in a few codes from a dispenser to hand Megatron an energon cube. “Refuel,” he rumbled, servos cupping Megatron’s where they touched. “Socialise. I will return before long — you don’t have anywhere to stay, do you? I can find a few mechs who will take you in and that you can work with.” Hearing that Optimus would return sent a small tendril of warmth through him. He told himself it was because Prime was familiar, because he knew what he was working with, if it was with Optimus Prime.

“Thank you,” Megatron said, “I was worried, because I didn’t know anyone,” and meant it, watching as Optimus walked away, his frame huge among the other Autobots, undeniably commanding attention. With one last lingering look, he turned back to the rest of the square to find somewhere to sit.

Through the mechs that were refuelling or simply talking, he saw — alone at a table by one of the walls, Blurr, unnoticeable in the shadow of a building, cradling a single cube of energon. 

Megatron was moving before he knew it, settling across him, a fresh anger stirring now that he knew of Shockwave’s fate. Blurr had his helm hanging low. Despite that, he must’ve known someone had sat across him, and as Megatron took one long draught of energon, he didn’t his optics off Blurr. He did not glance anywhere else. Not before Blurr had finally looked up from the scrutiny and revealed his expression to be one twisted into pain. Megatron continued to regard him flatly, until Blurr’s mouth opened and out came its usual flood tide— “You are probably wondering why I am so morose and sad-looking and I am tired tired _tired_ of people asking so I’ll tell it to you forthright right here, he died, okay, he died and I loved him but he’s dead.”

They were in the shadow of a building, in one of the furtherest tables. His right arm was the closet to the wall, and no bot was looking. 

Blurr stilled under the cold steel of a cannon barrel against his leg. 

Megatron leaned forwards, arm half-transformed under the table. “Do you know how the Decepticons lost?”

There was no answer in the heavy silence of the threat, and no answer necessary.

“Because there was a spy in their midst.” His placed aside his energon cube with his left servo and from his subspace drew his Decepticon badge, enveloped in his fist. He did not show it completely, but let it be hinted at, the glint of it just visible between the fingers, before it was hidden away again and he placed the servo flat against the table. “I know,” he said, and savoured the way the words widened Blurr’s optics. “I know every scrap of intel. I know of his infatuation with you.”

“You–“ Blurr began, but Megatron shoved his cannon forwards until it dented Blurr’s leg-spur and he fell silent. 

“He called you to him in his last moments of destruction.” The accusing tone in his voice was clear. _Shockwave sought to protect you,_ Megatron meant, _yet here you are now while his spark withers. You said you loved him._

As though hearing the unspoken blame, Blurr said, “I did did did I loved him I loved _Longarm_ , and Longarm Prime is dead!”

It drew them a few looks, but Megatron’s cannon was completely unseen under the table, his own leg also obscuring it — no one saw his weapon, and once the bots recognised that it was Blurr, they looked away, familiar with his agony. 

“I never thought that, when I met the bot that Shockwave so adored, I would meet a coward.”

Blurr’s optics shifted from pain into something burning. He dropped his pitch to a low anger because there was still the threat of being overheard — Megatron suspected no-one knew that Longarm Prime had been Shockwave and Blurr was ashamed of loving a Decepticon. “I’m not a coward- I am not an idiot- he is a _killer_ \- he is a liar he destroyed everything my home my people my life! Can’t you see this around you- all these bots all this death this whole planet torn to shreds and it was all because of him! How could I go and what what pity let alone love something that has caused this?”

“You haven’t gone to visit,” Megatron said simply, iciness growing in him. It was a cold diamond of something utterly unnamable. “You must know that he’s on the brink of death.”

“He isn’t Longarm that isn’t him and I loved _Longarm_ not this destroyer not what he is. It isn’t him.”

“Regardless, your cowardice makes you a killer,” Megatron sneered. “You leave him to die.”

“Me?” His voice rose. “I’m a killer? You would tell me that I’m a killer me an Autobot while he’s a Decepticon who lied who murdered my friends who strung me along who told me he adored me who stole my secrets who–“

“ _I_ have been a spy.” Megatron’s servo transformed on its own volition, in anger, snapping into steel-tipped edges of claws that bit thick lines into the table and snapped back just as quickly, though the scars in the furniture remained. “ _I_ have walked among enemies and pretended until I lost the line of pretend and reality — _I_ fought with them, _I_ was their confidant, _I_ saw the order within all their madness and chaos, the hidden shine of their personalities beneath, _I_ stood in the fields where they died —“ he met Blurr’s stare with one of glacial steel and hissed his words. “You want to compare ‘friends’? When behind enemy lines, you put your spark into it — _they_ were my friends.” 

Blurr moved to speak and Megatron shoved his cannon forwards and sent thunderous charge crackling down its length to spark over Blurr’s struts. He would be able to remove Blurr’s legs until Blurr fell as nothing but a torso that would never be able to run again. “They were starving and suffering. With every battle we starved them further— wounded them further. _You_ and _I_ killed and tortured more mechs in the shape of Decepticons than you can even begin to _fathom_. You doubt you’ve killed, yet in the end they were weeping for help, their demises looming, mechs offlining themselves because everyday was one of pain and fear; mechs that hated each other sharing energon lines in their last breaths where they collapsed in the corridors and I stepped over their bodies; mechs going mad when Autobots like you ordered it— when _I_ was ordered and tainted their energon sources—” In the darkness he spat his next words, all malice, all bitter fury, half through the lies, half through the truths, “Their surrender was turned away with scorn! _You_ have already destroyed a planet! You _are_ a killer! They were good mechs with their own lives and their own wishes and you would spurn them for your _mindless_ arrogance of heroism— not once nor twice but again and again and even against the one who risked _everything_ for you-!“

Blurr’s servos came down hard enough on the table that it shattered. “Shut _up_!” he screamed. Megatron’s two claws shot back and were servos again, no claws, no cannons, resting in his lap, and he yanked his lashing tendrils of his anger inwards so quickly that they jolted his own frame. Every optic turned to them if they hadn’t been staring already once Megatron started shouting. Blurr was bristling with unbridled emotion, shaking so violently that it he seemed on the brink of shattering. 

Megatron’s energon cube laid splashed across the floor. He focused on it — less of it had spilled than he’d expected — bending down to pick it up and vented deeply to calm himself. His veins were thudding with energon fiercely enough that he, too, thought he might burst.

“You you you you you youyouyou–“

“He is kept in Optimus’ building,” Megatron said, with all the quietness of a storm. “Go to him. Before there’s no one left to go to.”

Megatron stood to leave, and as soon as he moved, Blurr disappeared in kicked up dirt. He didn’t know if Blurr was following his order or just unleashing his anger out in speed. Muttering from other bots started around him and grew louder and louder as he crossed the square simply for somewhere to go. He felt his composure shattering. If he hadn’t compromised his cover when lost his meekness by the third sentence talking to Prime, he’d destroyed it now by blowing up Blurr. He almost regretted coming, but he didn’t. 

He couldn’t meet the wary optics of the other bots, so he walked, helm down, aimlessly, servos clenching and unclenching in the remnants of his anger. The cowardice in Blurr’s denial was shocking. Yet stereotypical. Megatron should’ve expected it, but he still loathed it when faced with it. It was Shockwave’s doing, not his, yet he was wounded by it all the same. His processor was a war of denials and doubling back.

He would’ve ground his teeth and ex-vented steam if he didn’t run straight into the broad chest of Optimus Prime. Helm ringing with the impact, he looked up, at Optimus, into the sun. Shining. 

“I hope you don’t make this a common occurrence,” Optimus said, smiling lightly, and that blissful amusement and ignorance of his was suddenly too much in the face of Megatron’s anger. It was white, all white, all pure, and in a wild moment Megatron realised that he _wanted_ it. Wanted to claim it. Ruin it. Have it ruin him. Take him and blind him and burn him into ash.

“Optimus,” he said, seizing the Prime’s large servos. Optimus’ optics widened in surprise. “I have a— proposition.”

“Are you alright?”

“I want you to frag me,” Megatron muttered. He felt the shock ripple through Optimus’ frame. “No—“ he added, before Optimus could complain. “This is not the plea of a needy slave mech. I have _never_ been taken unwillingly before. I simply want something better,” he admitted, closing his optics, leaning forwards to rest his helm against Optimus’ chest where they were standing, much more gently, this time. “Something better in all this dust. Otherwise I think I’ll go mad.”

“Then I accept your proposition,” Optimus said, and Megatron felt his systems surge in delight because he hadn’t really been expected an agreement. He should’ve known that putting his alleged health and happiness on the line would sway Optimus. The servo he was holding began to lead him and he found his pedes following. “But I must ask something of you first.”

Just as quickly his delight faded and familiar paranoia reared his head. It’d been too easy, his processor surmised. Everything had been too easy not to be a trap.

“What is your designation?”

“Mega,” Megatron said, discreetly diverting power to his systems in the case of an ambush, to be able to transform back into his true form in an instant, cannon reared, fighting his last in the heart of Autobot territory. 

“Like Ultra,” Optimus said instead, chuckling to himself. Megatron continued to stare up at him — the immense Prime — weapon systems half-powered, expecting Optimus to turn a gun on him. But he did not. “It’s a good designation. Any designation is, if you can live up to it.”

“I chose it for myself,” Megatron said, numbly.

“While that’s unusual, it isn’t unheard of. The Matrix chose mine, though I think that took the idea of it from me; it was just a catalyst for my— realisation.”

“Can you defy the Matrix?”

“Of course,” Optimus answered. “Everybody has a choice, no matter what.”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Why not?”

“I thought you of all bots would understand how it is to be backed into a corner.”

“Sometimes it seems that our choices aren’t favourable,” Optimus admitted. “But even so, that is a choice.” With a moment’s thought, he added, “After the Decepticons lost their headquarters in Badlands and we thought we’d won — they’d been chased off Cybertron, after all — we found a pocket resistance based in Fort Scyk that threatened to detonate an Autobot settlement in its outskirts. So we let them live. We let them leave the planet, to join the rest of the Decepticons.”

“Why would you even _consider_ —“

“I had their word.”

“And how little their ‘word’ means!” 

“They had ours,” Optimus added softly. “Detonating meant their certain deaths, and we knew above all that they valued their own lives. We evacuated the settlement by the time the Decepticons were set free. We had choices there, too. I could’ve broken my word and killed them after the Autobots were safe. I could’ve let the Autobots die. I could’ve offered my own life for theirs. We always have a choice. Just as I had a choice to turn down your proposition — did you have a choice in offering it?”

_No_ , Megatron wanted to automatically respond. He needed to go somewhere away from the prying optics of the other Autobots. He needed some way of getting to Shockwave. In theory, it was a choice — but in execution, it was not, because the only other choices were too reprehensible to consider. Letting Shockwave die.

But if he said no, he knew what Optimus’ reaction would’ve been. “I may not know many Autobots, but there are none more worthy than you,” he said, avoiding the question with- the truth, as usual. “I have not interfaced in a very long time. I’d like to experience it before I leave the planet.”

“You’re leaving?” Optimus asked. When he punched in the pin to his building, he covered it with a servo. “I knew I did something wrong when I recounted Cybertron’s extent of destruction to you.”

“It was nothing of your doing. I’d planned to leave regardless,” Megatron said. The inside of the building was dark, and one long corridor lined with many doors. Megatron knew instantly which one led to Shockwave because there was another pin-pad on it. They passed it by, however, towards Optimus’ berth room, which was at the end of the hall.

“This is such sombre talk.” Optimus’ servo settled on Megatron’s hip as they entered. The room was as bland as he had expected. There was a berth, a desk by the wall piled with data-pads, a seat, a floor-lamp, and nothing much else. The walls were plain plaster, the floor smoothed stone, and it was as much a temporary room as any. Megatron was struck by the sudden thought that Optimus probably had never taken another mech here before.

The hold around his hip squeezed and sent unexpected warmth through him. Megatron— hadn’t thought this far ahead, he realised. He’d extended the offer of fragging easily and readily, but hadn’t planned the logistics of it quite yet. He hadn’t lied when he said he hadn’t fragged in a long time. It was an unnecessary consumption of power. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d last done it — and in this smaller, disguised form, he was certain that it was never.

“I can see why some mech was enthralled with you to the extent that they would keep you caged up,” Optimus admitted, gently encouraging him to make his way to the berth, “When I first saw you, I saw something irresistible in you. It was terrifying.”

“Terrifying?” Megatron paused by the edge of the berth, considering. Optimus’ long legs struts stretched out before him as Optimus settled down.

“I am rarely gripped by attraction so fierce,” Optimus said, though his last word hitched in his vents as Megatron knelt onto the berth and swung a leg over Optimus’, so that he was straddling his hips, trying to look down on the Prime. “You couldn’t have wanted it.”

It was a strange sensation. Warmth emanated from Optimus, heating his legs, his torso, spreading across his plates. Optimus himself looked up at him, servos raised to cup at his hips, and Megatron had never felt so commanding yet small at once. 

“Do you think I hero-worship you?” Megatron demanded, placing his arms on Optimus’ shoulders. Their torsos were so close that he swore he could feel the buzz of the Matrix. The dimness of the room surrounded them, the only light source from the lamp in the corner, and it made the entire universe feel small, small enough to contain only the two of them. 

“No,” Optimus said, his lips forming the word, his mask already placed aside.

“Good.” Megatron ground his hips down with the praise, and felt another surge of satisfaction as he saw Optimus’ optics shutter and his helm loll back at the stimulation. “Because I _don’t_. Is there any other bot that doesn’t?”

His interface panel was still heating up further as he dragged it across Optimus’, deliberately, with aching slowness. “Is there any bot out there that wouldn’t want you? Want _this_?” 

“I would think so-“ Optimus said, and was cut short by a groan as Megatron did it again. Megatron felt his cooling fans kick in as Optimus’ servos began exploring up and down his body, careful to avoid any injuries that were still recovering, playing against the sensitive wires between his plating.

“Don’t be idiotic,” Megatron found himself snarling, through pants. “They love you. They would writhe on your spike any day. But _I’m_ the one who has it here. You met me for barely a cycle and chose _me_.”

“I did.” A broad servo spanned against his back and pressed them together, chest-to-chest. He could feel Optimus’ EM field flaring with desire and pleasure and let his own reach forward in response until they tangled, pressing into each other. “Because–“

“Don’t give me that slag,” Megatron cut him off, and he found that he didn’t want to hold back anymore. His interface hatch slid back, his spike pressurising between them and his valve pulsing with need, lubricant smearing wet and shiny between them. Optimus’ fingers somehow found their way inside, and Megatron didn’t even realise that he’d shuttered his optics and was reeling back with the thick, blunt, fingers pressing inside him, stretching him widely in a wholly foreign but delicious way. 

How shameful it would be, to be sliding himself up and down the enemy’s hero’s fingers, but Megatron couldn’t find himself to care, nor feel shamed at all. Optimus’ servo held him up above his waist as his fingers pumped into Megatron’s valve, squelching with the lubricant, watching it drip all over his now-extended spike. “Do you ever use your valve?” Optimus asked, his optics fixed on Megatron’s face. Megatron was vaguely aware that his expression must’ve been one of half-realised bliss, optics flickering with each pump. “I’m going to be enormous in you.”

“Rarely,” Megatron managed, his valve clenching at the words and their promise. As Optimus added another finger, he whined, collapsing forward against Optimus, his hips shifting down all on their own. He couldn’t remember feeling so full, his every wire alight with sensation. “Oh–“ Optimus’ spike brushed against the folds of his spread valve, unwittingly taunting, so unmistakably hot and commanding that his legs fell open to give the Autobot leader more access. “The bigger the better,” he gritted. “Let me remember it. Let me feel it. _Optimus_.”

Optimus’ entire frame jerked at the mention of his name, and again his spike slid against Megatron’s wanting valve. “In,” Megatron ordered, though the tone of it was diminished by his flushed face-plates and ragged venting. Optimus obeyed nonetheless, sliding his fingers out until Megatron writhed at the loss, pressing himself against Optimus as much as he could, every plate soaking in the heat. Then Optimus’ spike pressed in instead, huge and blunt. His processes fell away at the entrance of it. He knew he was making some sort of noise, and that his servos were madly gripping every part of Optimus they could reach for stability as he was speared wide.

“Okay?” he heard from somewhere, and nodded frantically as Optimus began to slowly raise him on his spike. The world was a blur of sensation, so good that he couldn’t seem to close his mouth against his litany of praise while Optimus picked up the speed, bouncing him hard in his lap, his spike disappearing between Megatron’s legs. 

And he just as suddenly found himself flipped over on his back and Optimus was covering him on every side as he pounded away, Megatron’s legs hooking themselves around Optimus’ waist, his whole body rocked back with every thrust. Optimus was an unstoppable force opening him up. Even as Megatron overloaded embarrassingly quickly, shouting through it, Optimus didn’t let up, lubricant flecking between them, Megatron’s valve sensitive and sending twitches through his entire frame each time Optimus thrust. Optimus’ servos cradled him in shocking juxtaposition to their pace, a thumb smoothing over his cheek, his legs bracketing Megatron’s, all heavy heat that kept him pinned down and that he could’ve thrown off if he wanted but didn’t. He wanted nothing more than to stay there, Optimus pistoning into him, until he forgot all his worries.

Cool air met his back as he was lifted, again, and Optimus was kneeling on the berth, holding Megatron up in his servos, until Megatron was only kept up by those servos, his legs hooked around Optimus, and the giant spike in him. As Optimus heaved him up and down this time, gravity sunk him further down on Optimus’ spike, widening him in ways he didn’t know was possible. “Optimus!” he cried, “Ah-!”

His spike rendered Megatron thoughtless, wiped him completely blank. There was no ulterior motive of Shockwave, or the Decepticon cause. Just Optimus, fragging him, spiking him, and for a ludicrous moment Megatron imagined staying, reaching for Optimus whenever he wanted, being picked up and fragged shockingly easily, chosen out of all the Autobots, _him_ –

“Mega,” Optimus was panting. “Mega, oh, Primus, you’re so tight, Mega, so wet for me–“

Even though his thrusts were getting sloppier, engines roaring as he abandoned his rhythm for a ground-breaking pace that made Megatron’s legs numb with how fiercely Optimus slammed them together, his hold was never tight enough to injure. 

“Are you going to overload?” Megatron taunted, unsure where the jibe came from, even as he felt his own building again, and his valve rippled around Optimus’ pumping spike that suddenly twitched in him and lit all his nodes, “Overload, Optimus —ah — in me, and plug me up with it, f-frag me again, until I can’t _walk_ –“

Charge danced up and down their plates, crackling loudly, light flashing between them. 

“Megatron!” Optimus cried, his spike giving a deep thrust and spilling, and Megatron had half a nano-klik through bliss to register what he had said before panic _burst_ through him like shattering glass and his arm transformed into his fusion cannon right in Optimus’ startled face and he gritted his dentae and fired. Optimus went flying to the other side of the room, helm smoking with the shot, and Megatron tumbled with him, still connected by the spike, until he managed to wrench himself out from under Optimus’ large frame, his valve complaining with the loss. The shot hadn’t been charged enough to injure seriously, but Optimus had been knocked unconscious with the blast, his optics dark and shuttered.

Megatron tried to in-vent, and found himself increasingly unable to. Optimus knew it was him. For how long? Was there an ambush? Could he even leave safely? How much of what he had been told about Shockwave was a lie? Was Shockwave actually dead? His spark-rate climbed rapidly, and he forced himself to find a source of steadiness, to in-vent.

As soon as he calmed, he felt the warm trans-fluid trickling out of his valve and down his leg, and, despite it all, felt a shiver of arousal run through him. He banished it immediately, forcibly snapping his interface panel shut.

He needed answers. He needed to know— how long had he been compromised? The fallen Prime laid there still, dormant power, and suddenly Megatron knew exactly how. 

His fingers trembled as he reached for Optimus’ chest latch, and, shockingly, they sprung open almost immediately, automatically more responsive after fragging. Within sat the Matrix and Optimus’ spark, dancing and pulsing with a pure white-blue. Megatron found himself transforming, his small frame growing as his original unfolded from sub-space. The added weight was familiar, re-assuring, and he opened his own chest, his spark reflecting off Optimus’ plates and seeming to reach for Optimus’ although they were too far apart for a spark merge. 

He would spark-merge, briefly, enough to check inside Optimus’ mind, and then leave. It used to be an old interrogation method before outlawed. It was reprehensible. But Megatron- had no choices. It was this or to walk out into the unknown with no information. It was this, or die, and sentence Shockwave with him. 

Optics shuttering, he leaned in close. The air was cool and sensitive against his plating that had been hidden away. Optimus’ heat was almost overwhelming, engulfing him — an EM field that was usually restrained reaching for him and urging him closer. 

His interface panel had slid back again, he realised, and had a moment of sweltering panic when he realised just what he was about to do— his choice had been not to die by forcing himself on _Optimus Prime_ —, but his spark was close enough to Optimus’, in that moment, and they merged in a melding of minds that felt like being dropped into a pool of water, a pool of memories, a coolness that enveloped him in a pair of welcoming arms and through which he fell. 

Memories flittered past him, and he reached out, and suddenly was living it all over again, Optimus seeing him standing there in the square, frozen, Optimus’ own spark abruptly clenching at the sight of an Autobot’s pain — and Optimus’ bewilderment that he would have such a strong reaction to a mech he barely knew. Memories and emotions scrolled by faster and faster, each of their encounters, Optimus _feeling_ that the strange new Autobot was much like Megatron, but never knowing — ‘Mega’ staring up at the sky, ‘Mega’ eyeing him with no small degree of skepticism — everything too familiar to be true, but it was too terrible of an accusation to bring upon what could be an innocent Autobot. And, worse yet, everything Optimus had told him was true. Megatron dipped back into earlier memories, Optimus slamming his servos down on a table in an unfamiliar court room as he shouted at the Autobot High Council about the peace treaty and was dragged out kicking and protesting, Optimus refusing to fight the war any longer, Optimus witnessing Shockwave’s blast from the other side of the planet, the whole horizon lighting up with fire, the planet shaking, lightning cracking apart the sky and a wave of light that shattered every shard of glass.

‘Mega’ sitting astride him, glorious, his waist small in Optimus’ servos, to be marvelled. Optimus’ desire swelled up in him as the memory caught him by hooks and hauled him in, Optimus’ lust, the tremble in his servos as he spread Mega as slowly as he could, a tidal wave building in him — a tidal wave of pure heat. Megatron was aware that somewhere, in the present outside world, that his open valve, now its usual size, had slid onto Optimus’ waiting spike and was sending jolts through his frame that echoed through his spark, uncertain where he ended and Optimus began, joined at two points, his pleasure resounding with Optimus’ and reverberating through his frame.

‘Are you going to overload?’ the taunt rang, and rang, and rang, like a crystal bell, and that was when — Megatron realised — Optimus had _known_ , for sure, and suddenly the memory’s — or maybe it wasn’t the memory’s, but Optimus’ in the present — emotions hit in him full force. There was immeasurable joy, a heat-wave of lust, a universe’s radiance of _hope_ that rendered Megatron stunned, wordless in the face of it. Above it all sailed affection that was so overwhelming in its all-encompassment that it was blistering. Megatron was swept away in it, swallowed by the feeling, and just as suddenly he became aware of Optimus’ conscious between their sparks, hovering on the fringes, _waiting_ for him. Had been waiting as soon as Megatron had merged, and had chosen not to interfere. Behind him stood the indistinct figures of the many Primes of past, shining with light, the pillars to the temple of purity that was Optimus. 

Another wave of hope, of affection, of something that Megatron did not dare name, and he felt his own spark leap with it, on the edge of reciprocity, never having known such fierce emotion — never, even when he had merged in the past — before his alarm slammed in and he reeled back. Optimus was still reaching for him, hope and hope and hope and careful gentleness extended and regret and an invitation for forgiveness while Megatron struggled back. Wanted _outoutoutoutout_ and found that he couldn’t. 

He realised with earth-shattering horror that he hadn’t been the one that had forced himself on Optimus — the Matrix was strong enough to prevent him from spark-merging in the first place, but it had invited him instead, and was _keeping him there_. Optimus’ presence in his spark was patient, welcoming, and Megatron knew what he welcomed— a spark-bond, to tie them together forever. He shoved his fear in the face of it, frightened like a caged animal, and Optimus reeled, the light of his spark fading away, and with that hesitation Megatron wrenched himself free.

The bland room greeted him once again and he physically lurched back until he sat venting heavily over Optimus’ still-unconscious form, his valve dripping over Optimus’ spike because they had connected during the merge. He shut his interface panel shakily, and looked up to Optimus, where his calm, resting expression seemed tinged with a frown, still illuminated by his open spark.

Optimus’ spark. 

In his catalogue of Optimus’ memories, he knew the code to Shockwave’s prison. He knew what Optimus had told him was true. He had gathered the information he needed and knew that his circumstances were not dire. He could gather Shockwave and escape. He could deliver another shattering blow to the Autobots by crushing their hero’s spark. There was no time for hesitation.

He pulled back his claws and plunged them forwards, into the wall by Optimus’ body, and then he opened his vocaliser to _howl_. His claws struck again and again, entirely savage, tearing gashes into the concrete walls because he could not, could not bring himself to, destroy Optimus’ spark. “How _dare_ you!” he snarled, claws nearly denting in their fury. “How _could_ you!” 

When he screamed his agony again, it came out as only white static. Optimus Prime. In all his idiocy, he had let Megatron come so close, let Megatron onto his spike and even into his spark. He was supposed to be _punished_ for this blindness, supposed to be ruined beyond belief for allowing his enemy so close because of his misplaced trust, but that trust had impossibly won out, because Megatron could not bring himself to do it. He could not bring himself to kill him. 

He found himself exhausted, slumped over Optimus’ body, and his claws reluctantly fell against the floor. There was no use fighting himself.

He withdrew slowly, instead pacing over to Optimus’ desk. There were datapads everywhere, weapons that needed servicing, and– in one of the drawers, many recorders. He picked one up and flicked it on as he returned to Optimus’ prone form. 

“Optimus Prime,” he began, his processor buzzing through its static, and thought about how he didn’t really know what message to leave, but knew that he had to leave one. “I cannot even _begin_ to explain to you how brazenly idiotic your actions have been, but I leave that for you to dwell upon.”

As he spoke he shut Optimus’ chest latch, and leaned in to his body, to his warmth, and thought about staying. “As you have probably surmised, I have come to retrieve Shockwave. He is–“

Megatron paused, feeling Optimus shift imperceptibly beneath him though his sensors reassured him that Optimus was not conscious. The recorder hovered beside him, filming. Megatron instinctively turned his face away from it into Optimus’ shoulder, disliking cameras, even though it was necessary, and then felt betrayed by his own automatic intimacy. “The Decepticon cause as you are familiar with has long been lost. That, you know. But now, your Autobot dream faces that same destruction. Our people are all that are left. Our people _are_ our causes.” 

His claws came up to tip Optimus’ resting face towards him, with as much care as they could muster. “To stay, or to abandon my people? You leave me very horrible choices, Optimus Prime.”

He moved to closer, then, to reciprocate in one action what Optimus had offered him when they shared sparks, but paused in the last moment. “When you’re awake,” he promised. “Kiss me then.” Then he drew away, turning the recorder off and shifting as he rose, mass again folding away into subspace, claws withdrawing, stride becoming shorter, shrinking. 

He did not look back this time. His mind narrowed into focus. He would find Shockwave and leave. He would cauterise this wound. 

There were no more distractions to be had. Feeling very distant, he found the door to Shockwave easily. He tapped in the pin and the door withdrew to reveal Blurr throwing himself between the entrance and Shockwave, who stirred feebly. The room stunk of energon and burnt metal — Shockwave, in his usual hulking mass, was almost unfamiliar in the extent of his injuries. His arms had been stripped of most of their struts and instead were held together by only exposed wires, and his legs were twisted apart, all their plating burnt from the inside, curling away from his frame. But his single optic, through its cracked glass, was glowing brightly, and his exposed spark chamber was thudding steadily — much too steadily for his injuries. The explanation lay in Blurr’s own chest that was open, Shockwave’s spark’s colour now matching his. Blurr had, quite obviously, shared his spark with Shockwave.

A high whine was filling the room, undetectable on usual frequencies. 

Megatron stood in the doorway, not entering, cautious of Blurr panicking. “Still the same Longarm Prime?” 

Blurr’s optics were leaking though his arms were outstretched in front of Shockwave. He must’ve been terrified that Megatron, an ‘Autobot’, would condemn him and spread the word that he’d shared his spark with a Decepticon that was due for execution. “I can’t let him die. I can’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t–“

“Good,” Megatron said. He shifted his attention to Shockwave, who he knew — even in his injured state — would recognise him. “Shockwave, I want you to compact as much as you can, but leave the jammer running. We’re leaving.”

He _saw_ Blurr’s processor stall and come to a complete grinding halt. 

“Do you want to come with us?” he asked Blurr. “Do you want to become a traitor to the Autobots?”

“No!” Blurr’s instinct gave him away. “I mean- no no no I have to save him but I can’t betray my people I can’t I can’t-“

“I understand,” Megatron said. Shockwave, through great protest in his plating and wires, had folded most of his mass away into sub-space, shrinking further and further until he rested on the ground as nothing but a small cube. Megatron went to pick him up, and Blurr trembled in indecision between stopping him and letting him. 

Shockwave was barely warm and thrumming in his servos, able to fit in just one.

“So listen to me closely,” Megatron said, plates on his arm shifting with many clicks and whirrs. His fusion cannon emerged, pointed straight at Blurr. “The microphones in here are not functioning. Shockwave has been emitting a signal to jam them — presumably as soon as you had come in.”

Blurr’s optics shone with the realisation that Shockwave had been protecting him again. Megatron found himself jealous, then irritated, then smoothed it over into stillness again. 

“Tell them I threatened you. Tell them when we met outside in the square that I said I would level a second shot into the planet unless you helped me retrieve Shockwave.” He paused, taking in Blurr’s tremor, his frame-wide shaking. “If you _do_ go running and raising an alarm as soon as I leave, I _will_ kill you. If I find that we are in a place of no return, I will crush his spark and you will know unending pain. If you do not do exactly as I say: _I will kill you_.”

He wouldn’t.

Blurr practically collapsed in relief as the burden of choice was taken off him, and Megatron withdrew his fusion cannon.

He left. Out the front door. 

Ten miles later, he was trekking down the roads to where he had landed the ship, refuelling with the energon he had stored in his subspace from earlier.

A hundred miles later, he was into airspace, Shockwave sprawled out in one of the quarters. 

A thousand miles later, Starscream established a commlink. :Where in the fragged universe did you go?!: 

:Did you hear?: Megatron replied.

:In case you forgot, we planted ourselves on a desolate rock in the middle of nowhere. There aren’t any public frequency lines running around in _lightyears_ from here.:

Then they didn’t know that Cybertron had been destroyed. It was for the best, Megatron surmised. He did not want his Decepticons rallying another war when it would likely kill them. :I retrieved Shockwave,: he said, and waited a moment for Starscream to collect himself. 

:Would you fragging believe! Tell the idiot I said congratulations.: His flippancy hid his relief, Megatron knew. :We’ll throw a party for him when you get here. And for you. Whatever, just get here soon. You picked a good place, you know. There are these comets that don’t stop coming through and they have— of all things— _energon_ in them. It feels ridiculous, but if we shoot sharp it’s worth it. I nailed two yesterday in one blast. Hah!: 

:That’s good to hear,: Megatron said as his SIC continued to ramble on. Space closed around him. 

 

 

 

 

The next time they met, Optimus _did_ kiss him — in front of the whole horrified and watching Autobot Council, even, with great relish. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, to a lot of you reading this— the stuff you make is downright amazing, and I haven’t even managed to find most of the diamonds hidden in this fandom. I saw a couple names on my last fic that I recognised and practically keeled over with delight at seeing. Seeing, say, the author of one of my two favourite bottom Meg fics kudos/bookmark my stuff is flooring. I wrote this one on full blast because of it, even though I went on holiday for over half a week. It feels so good to have the writing bug back.
> 
> You guys were the ones that inspired me to make these in the first place, so this story is dedicated to all of you out there, writer or reader. If you're reader, you inspire me too — I usually filter by kudos when reading so if you leave kudos you're directing me to these wonderful places. 
> 
> Edit: Thank you to the amazing Polypolyvoly for this amazing [fanart ](https://polypolyvoly.tumblr.com/post/181511472303/i-really-really-wish-to-give-you-a-hundred-kudos)<3


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